


the last enemy

by Ralph_E_Silvering



Series: Tremontaine [1]
Category: Swordspoint Series - Ellen Kushner
Genre: Afterlife, Alec remains the same, F/M, Family Feels, Gen, Katherine Talbert POV, Katherine is a Badass, M/M, Theron Campion POV, Theron grows up, post-The Fall of the Kings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 14:13:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20725514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ralph_E_Silvering/pseuds/Ralph_E_Silvering
Summary: Theron and Jess receive news that the Duchess Tremontaine is dead, meanwhile, Katherine begins a new adventure. Post-The Fall of the Kings.





	the last enemy

The city came into view with the rising sun. The familiar gates to the harbor swung slowly inward allowing the merchant ship to pass through, while cannon fired from the old fort located by the Ministry of Justice. In the distance, smoke rose from the warren called Riverside – located between two branches of the river that wound its way through the city, and home to unsavory characters, poor artists and scholars, and the second seat of the House of Tremontaine. Above came the middle city, where prosperous merchants and the middle class dwelled. And rising above them, windows glittering like diamonds in the autumn sunlight, stood the towering mansions of the nobility, still sound asleep at this ungodly hour of the morning.

It was a sight Theron Campion had never thought to see again.

His sister Jessica swung down from the rigging. “Reef the topsails!” She shouted to the men and women around her. Looking up at the crisp, white canvas billowing in the strong breeze, she added, “And the main sails as well! We’ll run ‘er in on oars!” 

A groan rose from the crew and Jess smirked. “Time to use those muscles, boys. They’ve been idle all trip!” 

There were a couple appreciate chuckles at this. It was true, the _Tielman’s Star_ had run with all sails furled the entire way from Chartil. The crew had had to hold on, for Jess refused to reef the sails even when they’d run into a late summer squall off the coast of Briandy. 

He noticed that the smirk did not reach Jess’ eyes. Theron’s mother, Lady Sophia Campion, must have noticed as well for she reached over and placed a gentle hand on Jess’ arm. “We’re almost there,” she reminded Alec’s daughter.

Jess’ glorious, hennaed-hued hair was wild about her head and her green eyes were hard. “Not soon enough,” she said, in a tone as hard as her glittering eyes. She stalked off to aid her crew, her sharp bark of “Theron!” following behind her.

Theron hurried to catch up. The news that had finally reached them in Chartil, carried on Tremontaine’s fastest ships and with her fastest riders – written in Marcus’ shaking hand – had not been good.

The duchess, Lady Katherine Talbert, Theron’s and Jessica’s formidable cousin, was dead. 

Murdered, Marcus wrote. He begged Theron, as Katherine’s heir, to return home as soon as possible. Already there were several claimants to the duchy and Marcus was doing everything he could to hold everything for Theron’s return. It was what Katherine’s oldest friend did not say in his letter though that had Sophia, Jess and Theron on edge – Who had murdered the duchess? And why?

Theron took his place at one of the oars, putting in as much work as the sailors around him, while the city slowly grew, men and women from the docks calling out to the _Tielman’s Star_. There was a subdued sound to their shouts, tension in their voices, and Theron watched the shadows grow on Jess’ face.

Sophia, standing at the prow, the wind whipping her long black skirts and striking black hair, frowned as she studied the city. She was pale and weary; she had loved Katherine fiercely from the moment she’d returned to the city with Theron’s father, the former duke – already sick with the illness that would eventually kill him. Returning to this place where Katherine had died without her, was no longer here, would never be here again, was hard. Theron bit his lip and tried to examine his own feelings. 

He found that it felt unreal to him – his cousin’s passing. The city had always felt like it was intrinsically hers – Riverside and Tremontaine as well. Her presence had been everywhere. All Theron’s life he had known that Katherine was there, that she was head of the family, that if anything bad ever happened, she would be there to help and protect him.

It was like a mooring had been suddenly knocked out from under him.

But for all that he felt adrift, lost, confused in this new world he – selfishly, shamefully – didn’t feel any sadness. Katherine had always been difficult and stern; she’d never been someone Theron had run to with his hopes and dreams and concerns since he was a little boy. He’d always felt that she disapproved of him somehow and his constant attempts to please her never seemed to have any effect.

He grimaced, dropping his eyes back down to his rowing when he caught Jess’ flinty gaze. Jess’ and Sophia’s grief was genuine. Sophia never made any secret of her respect and love for the late duchess and Jess, for all that she constantly baited and defied and ran from Katherine’s authority, loved the duchess with a fierce desperation Theron was only just beginning to see. 

Sophia had told him, low and barely above a whisper several nights ago – the ship rocking beneath them as the stars shown like diamonds above – that Katherine had been the only mother Jess had ever known.

Theron had rolled his eyes, still so immature even after three years at sea and on Kyros. Even after his near-death at the hands of Lord Nicholas Galing on the steps of the University dais. Even after learning that the blood of the old kings in the North flowed as strongly in his veins as it had in his father. 

“Katherine dumped Jess on a series of nurses as soon as she was born. She didn’t have a maternal bone in her body. If she had, Jess would be Tremontaine instead of me.”

Sophia, most mild of women, briefly looked like she wanted to slap him. Instead she pressed her lips tightly together and gave her son her most flinty look. “You speak of things of which you know nothing,” she said, reverting to the syntax of her youth in her anger.

But before Theron could demand she explain, Jess had come bursting into the cabin, entire body vibrating with tension as it had been since the news of Katherine’s death reached them, and Sophia had dropped the subject.

Marcus Ffoliot, Marshal of the Tremontaine fortunes for close to half a century, was waiting for them when they disembarked. The man who had taught Theron to spin a top was worn and tired, with so much grey liberally streaking his hair that he looked like he’d aged a decade instead of the three years Theron, Sophia and Jess had been gone. He’d lost the comfortable weight he’d acquired in his middle years and his eyes were two dark holes looking out from his face. He tried to smile in greeting but it looked more like a grimace.

Sophia immediately went to him and gathered him into her arms, hugging him and whispering comforting reassurances into his ear. Jess’ eyes, like Theron’s went around the docks. Most of the sailors continued going about their business; however, they were all keeping an eye on the newest arrivals. There was a watchful expectation in the air, a sense of the calm before the storm, that Theron had gotten very good at sensing after spending months aboard ship at the mercy of the sea and sky.

Tremontaine’s presence was everywhere. Men in their House colors, as well as several in plain clothes whom Theron recognized from Tremontaine House or the Riverside House, leaned nonchalantly against buildings or were in deep conversation with sailors, or hovered menacingly several steps behind Marcus.

“I’m afraid it’s necessary since - - since the duchess was killed,” the man who looked like a stranger told them. He’d stumbled over Katherine’s name liked he couldn’t believe she was gone even now.

Jess’ hand blatantly rested on the long knife at her side. “Are things really so bad?” she asked.

"Things are – unsettled.” Marcus glanced around them again, taking in the brilliantly-blue autumn sky, the call of the gulls overhead, and the slap of sails and rigging as the wind blew stead and strong. “I waited to hold the public funeral until you returned.” At their surprised looks he added, “We had the private one of course. She rests next to your father in the Tremontaine family crypt.”

Sophia, who still had a hand on his arm, said, “Surely things will calm down now that Theron has returned.” She was discretely taking Marcus’ pulse, Theron noticed. Once a doctor, always a doctor. 

Marcus humored her by remaining still, but his serious expression remained unchanged. “I’m not so sure. Everyone in the city knows that Ka - - that she was murdered at another nobleman’s command. And not honorable single challenge as well but set upon in her own home by trained assassins - -.” He trailed off. “But come,” he added, waving them towards the coach patiently waiting up the dock. “I’ll take you to Tremontaine House and explain everything there.” 

Jess’ face was as dark as a thunderstorm. “That’s where she was killed?” His sister looked dangerous, her weathered face, scarred hands, hennaed hair and piercing green eyes lending her the look of a woman you did not want to cross. Theron had never really noticed how much she took after Katherine in her expressions and mannerisms until someone she loved was threatened.

Marcus snorted. “If she had been in the Riverside House those thugs wouldn’t have gotten passed the first bridge without someone raising the alarm. I told her –,” he broke off, his voice rising uncomfortably. He took a deep breath and started again, “I told her it would be wiser to remain in Riverside until everything was over, but - - Katie was never good at running away,” he finished quietly, his voice pained. 

Theron’s lips twitched and Jess snorted. That was an understatement. Cousin Katherine had never run away from a challenge in her life; she was a swordswoman through and through. 

The ride up the hill to Tremontaine House was passed in silence. The city was eerily silent and there were more men posted at the gates to let them pass than Theron had ever seen before. The servants were sympathetic but subdued as Marcus led them up to the duchess’ study. 

Sophia, quiet and severe, went to stand by the window where she looked out onto the duchess’ immaculately kept gardens. They were a riot of color this early in the autumn, chrysanthemums in reds, oranges, yellows, whites, pinks, and purples dotted the shrubbery and bordered the paths. The apple trees the duchess so loved were heavy with deep red and bright green fruit in the orchard. Swans and geese still swam regally back and forth in the pond.

Theron stood awkwardly in the center of the room, unsure where to look and unsure whether he should sit down. The room was strange without Katherine’s commanding presence in it. No one was telling him what to do. No one was looking at him for direction either. He remained only the heir; every one of them was still waiting for the duchess. 

Jess stalked over to Katherine’s desk and began rifling through the neatly organized paperwork there.

Marcus cleared his throat and watched with a flicker of amusement as all three Tremontaine’s turned towards him with similar expressions of expectation on their faces. “She was killed in the wet rabbit room –,” he grimaced, “Sorry, I mean the long drawing room which has all the mirrors. Her practice room.” 

Katherine always got up at five in the morning, long before the rest of the house was stirring, and practiced her sword work for several hours. She’d been doing it since she was a girl here in this very house, and Theron remembered, as a very small boy, how he would run down to watch her sometimes – the rhythmic thump-thump of her sword as she went through move after exacting move, over and over again, until she got it right, or until she obtained a fluid sort of dance.

She’d tried to get Theron interested in the sword, but neither he nor Jess had ever wanted to follow her path. 

Theron’s hand clenched and he wondered, with a distant sort of interest, whether she would join Richard St Vier in the Riverside House, the two swordsmen, Master and Apprentice, training together forever – the echo of their presences, vivid enough to bend death around them, keeping Theron company in the long watches of the night.

Marcus’ voice came from a great distance. “I don’t think they expected anyone to be up.” Pause. “I don’t think they expected Katie to put up much of a fight.”

Jess snorted. “I expect they thought tales of her being trained by St Vier, of the duel to the death she fought to hold Tremontaine, were just exaggerations.” She sounded disgusted, but her words pierced the strange bubble Theron floated in.

“What?” he said.

Jess turned to face him, her hands full of dozens of papers Katherine had been in the middle of drafting at the time of her death. She raised an eyebrow at him, exactly as their cousin had always done when she was unimpressed with Theron’s logical reasoning. “’What’ to which part?”

Theron waved a hand. “Cousin Katherine fought a duel to the death to hold Tremontaine? When? Against whom?” _Why had he never heard of this before_?

Jess frowned. “I’m sure I’ve told you this story before.” 

Marcus looked as uncomfortable in the duchess’ study as Theron felt. “It wasn’t a story Kat liked being spread around, but I know I’ve told it to you a time or two.” 

Lady Sophia came back towards the other three and seated herself regally on one of the long couches. “And I have told it to you as well.”

Theron gritted his teeth. “Tell it to me again.” If he was meant to become duke after Katherine, he needed to know how she wanted him to go about it. 

Jess’ eyes were uncomfortably intense, but she obliged. “Well, you know that the old duke was named in the first Duchess Tremontaine’s Will. That he was challenged for a fortnight by all manner of distant relations; all of whom thought he would be easy pickings and they could claim the duchy by right of challenge.”

Marcus shook his head in resignation. He’d heard this story so many times it was ingrained in his bones. He took the seat next to Sophia, looking like he meant to jump right up again the moment Katherine walked in.

“But they had to get through St Vier first,” Jess continued. 

“And they never could,” Sophia added with satisfaction. She had known the swordsman on Kyros, her husband’s first lover and, she’d always accepted, the one who touched his soul and completed him. She was too wise to be sad or bitter about this fact. She had loved her husband with all her heart, and he had loved her; she was content with her lot. Life had turned out far richer and more varied, more beautiful than she had ever expected it to when growing up fenced in by Kyros’ small, provincial boundaries. 

“They never could,” Jess agreed. 

“And when he was ready -,” Marcus continued. 

“When the fortnight was over,” Jess interjected. Marcus nodded. 

“All of Riverside paraded him up the Hill to Tremontaine House, and he became the Duke,” Marcus finished.

“When he died,” Jess continued, her gold-flecked green eyes glancing towards the horizon, “Katherine was barely sixteen. Cousin Gregory was Lord Talbert and he thought he should be head of the family, not his younger sister.”

Theron grimaced. He could see it now. Cousin Gregory had always been boorish and pompous. And there had always been a healthy respect towards the duchess which Theron had accepted as his Cousin’s due but never really wondered about. He supposed he should have. Cousin Gregory wasn’t the type to observe Katherine’s steely-core unless it was forced upon him. 

“He challenged her right to Tremontaine,” Theron contributed to the story, awed despite himself. 

“He did,” Jess said grimly. 

“Many were waiting to do so,” Marcus put in. He had been the only one of them to actually remember those events. “She was a young girl who had come into possession of a great fortune. Most thought they could marry her and claim the duchy through her. Some thought it would be easy enough to hire a swordsman instead and claim the duchy through right of challenge. Greg was simply the first to make a move.”

“Her own brother,” Lady Sophia said, reprovingly, shaking her head.

Theron looked around the study again. His cousin’s presence – elegant and yet severe – was in every line of the room. She had been every inch Tremontaine. “He was a fool.”

“He was,” Jess agreed. Her healthy respect and slight fear of angering their ducal Cousin had been something Theron only gradually realized. He’d thought, as a boy, that his sister feared no one. 

“So what happened?” he asked the family gathered around him. It was Marcus who took up the story. “It was at Lord Michael Godwin’s – the then Crescent Chancellor – annual garden party. Katherine had interrupted another party of his barely a month before to challenge Lord Anthony Ferris – he was an old enemy of the duke’s – and so when she appeared to attend the party, this hulking swordsman doesn’t even let her through the door before crying challenge on her.

“Luckily,” Marcus continued, warming up to his theme, “Katie was wearing sensible clothes and carried both her sword and her knife. The old duke had warned her about potential challenges before he fled. She didn’t even have any lace on her sleeves,” he said, proudly and inconsequentially, to the great confusion of his audience. 

Marcus shook himself. “As the party being challenged, Katherine had the right to declare the extent.” Marcus’ voice was grim, his eyes distant as he looked towards the past. “I’ll never forget that day. I remember every single lord and lady there was so silent that you could hear a pin drop.” Marcus closed his eyes. “Katie was fingering the pommel of her knife and she stared not at the swordsman, but at her brother. There was a frown between her eyes, and I remember wondering why she didn’t speak and say, ‘First Blood’ –,” 

“But she didn’t,” Theron guess, already knowing that to Katherine, Tremontaine had been everything. 

Jess rolled her eyes. She’d known Katherine as well as he had.

Marcus smiled sadly, but didn’t open his eyes, merely continued on with his story. Sophia’s face was grave, but there was a hint of understanding in her dark eyes which Theron didn’t understand.

“Katie looked back at her brother’s hired swordsman and her voice was utterly calm and clear when she said, ‘To the Death.’ The uproar was tremendous. I remember Michael Godwin begging with her to reconsider. Greg Talbert turned pale and a woman, it might have been the Lady Janine, cried out in horror. But Katie held firm. She waited until the hall where she stood quieted again and then she spoke to her brother.

“I am the eldest son, Katie,” he said, confused. “It should, by rights, belong to me.” 

Katherine merely raised an eyebrow. When she spoke, she sounded like the old duke. ‘You seem entirely certain on what belongs to you, brother, but have you considered what belongs to me?’ she drawled. Her eyes flashed; I remember. ‘My uncle left Tremontaine in my keeping – the lands, the people, the title. He had the _right_ to leave it to anyone he chose – and he chose _me_.’ She rested her hand on the pommel of her sword then. ‘Do you know why he chose me, Greg, and not you?’

Greg Talbert shook his head. 

‘Then you have no right to the duchy. Tremontaine is mine.’” 

Marcus opened his eyes then and looked at the man and the woman Katherine had helped raise. Jessica looked impatient and Theron looked confused. He glanced over at his mother and then back at Marcus. “She won, of course,” Theron confirmed. 

Marcus, who had spent long years annoyed at the fact that neither of the old duke’s children made the least bit of an attempt to understand the woman who’d given them a home, tried to keep his voice gentle. “She won, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that she deterred every single person who heard that story from trying to take the duchy away from her, for they knew she would fight to the death to keep it.”

“Yes,” Theron said, shifting impatiently, “I understand that. What I don’t understand is why she cared that much about it. I’ve never wanted it, I’ve always just wanted to be normal, to be free, while Katherine –,” he waved his hand around at the opulent study, “all she cared about was Tremontaine.” 

Jess, for the first time in a while, interjected quietly, “That wasn’t all she cared about.” 

Theron grimaced. “It seemed to be what she cared about _most_.” 

“The point,” Sophia said, looking to him for permission to continue, “is that Katherine cared about family and duty and that to her, Tremontaine was family. You, Theron, were her family. As was Jess. She did not have to take us in when we returned from exile, yet she willingly gave her uncle the Riverside House again, accepted me and you in the family, and made you her heir. She did not have to accept and raise Jess, but she did. Did you not hear the story Marcus has told us? Katherine wanted Tremontaine because my husband left it to her. Because _he _left it to her.”

“What do you think Greg Talbert would have done as Duke Tremontaine?” Marcus asked and Theron, remembering Cousin Gregory’s hidebound, petty mind, shuddered at the thought.

“Exactly,” Marcus said. “Every day Katherine was the duchess; she made this city a better place.” He stood up and reached into his waistcoat pocket, withdrawing two pieces of folded and sealed parchment. “She was an idealist, like the old duke.”

He handed both Theron and Jess one of the pieces of parchment each, and then, offering a hand to Sophia, the two of them departed to leave Katherine’s heirs to read her last message to them.

Theron looked down at his, wondering just how long-ago Katherine had written this letter, and if she had known that her time was coming to an end. The letter began: 

_My Dearest Theron…_

Theron and Jess were both silent when they had finished their letters and later, Theron realized it was the only time he’d ever seen his sister cry.

Later, Theron found Jess in the Hall of Portraits, staring up at a picture of Katherine as a young woman, dressed in dark green leggings and a short brown coat, her favorite cloak – the one her uncle had ordered for her – in Tremontaine green and gold swept rakishly over one shoulder. Her face was calm and resolute, her dark eyes sparkled with intelligence, and the sword Richard St Vier had gifted her long ago gleamed at her side. She rested one hand on its pommel, body half-turned towards the viewer and half turned towards Tremontaine House, gleaming in the distance behind her. 

Beneath her were smaller portraits of Marcus and her mother, Lady Janine. To her right were portraits of Theron – the one she’d commissioned Ysaud to paint before Theron had left the city – and Jess, standing on the deck of her ship. At the other end of the line of portraits, a tall, handsome tow-headed man in red smiled warmly out from his portrait. A ruby ring gleamed on his finger and he held a sextant in his hand, while high above him stars gleamed in the heavens. Further down was a pretty woman dressed in silver-grey, a secretive smile on her face.

To the late duchess’ immediate left was a portrait of Theron’s father, Alec Campion. He was young in this portrait, like Katherine. His long, leaf-brown hair hung loose about his face, his green eyes gleamed with defiance and intellect, and his pale hand rested on a stake of books, next to a telescope and a chart of the stars. He was dressed in a richly-made suit of all black – a scholar’s colors – and on his finger the same ruby ring as the tow-headed man’s gleamed. 

Theron, looking at the two of them, the young Alec Campion and the young Katherine Talbert, saw the resemblance for the first time.

Jess obviously saw it as well. “She never had a good word to say about him,” she said. “Yet, now that I think about it, she invited scholars over to the House for weekly debates and meals, she joined the University Board of Governors, she kept up on all the latest scholarship…”

“She continued to fund the Tremontaine Chair in Astronomy and the Women’s Chair in Mathematics….”

“Her and Marcus are always talking over the latest scientific theories…”

“Michael Godwin always told me she handled the Council in almost the same way he did, just that nobody noticed it….”

Jess shook her head, half in annoyance half in admiration. “People see what they want to see, don’t they.” 

Theron, fingering the ruby ring that had been passed down from his father, to Katherine, to him, felt anger rising in him for the first time since news of his duchess cousin’s death reach him. “They do,” he agreed, remembering the half-dream, half-nightmare he’d been in leading up to Basil’s attempts to before a magical rite at the University. 

People had seen but had quietly brushed it aside. Only Arlen had seen and feared. And he had killed Katherine because of it. Because the blood of the old kings flowed more strongly in the ducal house of Tremontaine than in any other Southern noble family. Because he had seen danger where there was history and truth. Because he had seen a threat although no one. In Theron’s family – least of all Katherine – had wanted any sort of monarchy restored.

Jess was smiling sadly, and her fingers reached out to brushed gently along the canvas of Katherine’s portrait. “She always said she had a hard-enough job keeping me in line without trying to run the city as well.”

Theron looked from the ring on his finger to the portrait of his father. He closed his eyes and saw Katherine’s familiar smile, the gleam in her eyes as she and Marcus dissected a difficult problem and came up with an answer.

“What are we going to do about Arlen?” He didn’t know if, but his drawling, aristocratic voice was cold and dangerous. 

Jess’ fingers dropped from the canvas and she turned to face her brother. Her green eyes – so like his own – burned. “I think it’s time the Serpent Chancellor’s position was disbanded entirely, don’t you little brother?” 

Theron Campion remembered his lessons in law from the University. A prosperous society cannot move forward while threat of retaliation from parties not held accountable under the law maintain their authority.” 

Jess nodded, decisively. “And I’m quite sure Katherine would agree.”

_And so, Alexander Theron Tielman Campion returned to Tremontaine House and the city of his birth, after a journey of three years to foreign lands across the sea. He took his cousin’s seat as Tremontaine. The first several months after his return were filled with turmoil. The City of the Land saw permanent changes, including the removal of the Serpent Chancellor’s position from the Council of Lords, the increase in power and authority of the City Watch, and the execution of Lord Arlen, the last Serpent Chancellor, when it was revealed he was behind the hiring of the band of murderers who had entered Tremontaine House and murdered Duchess Katherine Talbert. _

_The new Duke Treontaine purchased the vast majority of Arlen’s library and dedicated all but a dozen or so works to the University, which created the Katherine Talbert Wing in honor of the late duchess. He also founded the Tremontaine Academy of Swordsmanship, which trained boys and girls, men and women in the art of fencing._

_Several years later he married Lady Francesca Ghent, a cousin of the Perry family, who was a Doctor of History, a novelist, and had recently written ‘A History of Tremontaine.’ _

_~ Excerpt from ‘A History of Tremontaine,’ by Francesca Ghent _

***

Katherine found herself walking down a dirt road. The sun was bright above her, the sky a clear, deep blue with small, fluffy-looking clouds scuttling across in a swift breeze. Green grass rippled like the sea as it climbed the hill to her left and to her right, a well-maintained hedge bordered the road.

She wasn’t sure where she was, but she was positive it was somewhere near the sea itself, because she could smell the salt in the air and hear the call of seagulls in the distance. She was dressed in a suit of deep blue velvet with gold trim around the edges. Her short coat was sewn in such a way as to allow her ease of movement should she need to draw the sword buckled at her waist. She realized that it was her favorite sword, the old one she’d had since she was a girl. It had been given to her as a gift by her Master, the famous swordsman Richard St Vier.

On her other hip was the beautifully made knife, with the hilt of woven vines and leaves, she’d received from her uncle on Last Night. It had been the first Last Night she’d spent with him and the Master – and what turned out to be the only one – at Highcombe. Her cloak, green and gold for the colors of Tremontaine, streamed out in a rather swashbuckling manner behind her. 

She felt both older and younger than she remembered feeling. The twinge in her knee, that strange pain in her back and even the faint trembling in her hands which had started up the past few months, were all gone. She walked and she breathed, and she tried to remember what she had just been doing moments before and what she was supposed to be doing now – but she could not.

Strangely, this did not cause her concern. Instead she simply kept walking. Katherine had always been a practical sort of person and she knew that eventually, sooner or later, she would come upon something she recognized. 

Until that time, she would simply enjoy the walk. She looked around her with delight. There were small birds chirping and calling from the hedge, and here and there she saw the soft fur of rabbits as they hid amid the long grasses. The weather was the indefinable time between late spring and early summer, and the cool breeze blowing in off the sea was soft and refreshing, teasing the ends of her long hair.

Katherine smiled. This place really was delightful. It had been a long time since she could simply take a walk in the country, with no cares or worries to assail her.

Reaching up to push a strand of unruly hair from her face, she noticed that there was none of the grey which had been steadily creeping into the leaf-brown color over the past few years. Instead, her hair was as soft and full as it had been in her girlhood. She pulled more strands forward to stare at them, vaguely disquieted by this realization – knowing it was important somehow.

Then she reached back up to feel the clasp which held her long hair back from her face. She’d had a series of ornate gold and silver hair clasps made when she’d come into the duchy. At first, she had not wanted to use the ones her alarming uncle had left behind. He’d used for his own hair, which was worn defiantly long from his days as a student at the University. 

And then she’d worn them as her own show of defiance against those hypocritical nobles who decried her uncle as mad and perverse and evil, when they’d attended his parties and continued to engage in behavior far worse than anything Alec Campion had ever done.

She’d worn them in defiance of the rumors that claimed he’d ruined her and gotten a child on her before he fled – Jessica, of course, although anyone with eyes would have seen the girl’s resemblance to the Black Rose, jewel of the theatre, and not short, plain-looking, boyish Katherine Talbert.

She’d worn them as armor, because she was alone in a world where everyone wanted to see her fail, or steal her lands and title from her, or turn her family against her, or turn the entire city against her.

She’d worn them because she was Tremontaine. Just as her uncle had been. Just as her great-grandfather had been. 

She’d walked into her first Council Meeting as Duchess Tremontaine in her own right, with the Master’s sword worn at her belt, dressed in Tremontaine green and gold with rings glittering at her fingers, and her uncle’s hair clasp – the one with the ruby in it – holding her hair back. And she’d watched with satisfaction as every single one of those hidebound, hypocritical selfish old fools swallowed back bile at her presence. 

She’d raised her chin as she met those unwelcoming stares and fixed them all with her haughtiest look. “Re-eally,” she drawled, at her most stickily aristocratic, “this place is devilish difficult to find. It’s almost like you don’t _want_ anyone doing their civic duty.”

Lord Michael Godwin, the Crescent Chancellor, had had to cough into his hand to hide the laughter which threatened to erupt at all those stunned faces. Little did the young duchess know it, but her resemblance to Lord David Alexander Tielman Campion when he’d first entered this chamber in much the same fashion over twenty years ago, was uncanny.

Lord Arlen, who’d actually been there that day, looked amused, although the Duke of Karleigh loudly declaimed that Council Chambers were no fit place for a woman, even a woman the Mad Duke had dressed as a boy.

“And yet,” Katherine Talbert said, seating herself between Karleigh and Arlen and settling her cloak around her with deliberate nonchalance. “I am here.” She looked up and her sharp gaze swept through the assembled lords like a scythe through wheat. She raised an eyebrow, every inch of her Tremontaine. “Shall we get down to business, gentlemen? Or do you mean to sit here gawking at me all day?”

Lord Hemmyng, whose daughter was much the same age as the Lady Katherine, couldn’t help smiling as well. “The duchess is quite correct. My lord Arlen?” He politely turned to the Serpent Chancellor. “If you could start your report from the beginning for the sake of Lady Talbert?”

And so it had continued.

Katherine heard the rhythmic thunk-thunk of sword strokes hitting wood long before she saw anything. Coming around a bend, a house came into view. It was a grand-looking country house three stories high, built all of dark wood and stone, and with huge windows which glittered in the sunlight. Most of the windows were thrown open to let in the balmy air.

The house stood on a cliff above the sea, which shone like a restless sapphire far below. Katherine couldn’t see above the hedges – as tall as two men – but she could hear the clucking of chickens and the bleating of a sheep.

The steady thunk-thunk continued.

Katherine hadn’t realized she’d stopped walking and was standing there, holding her breath, until a voice broke the silence – as startling as a flight of birds from a tree.

“Really, Richard,” drawled the voice, smooth as poured cream, “one would think you didn’t have anything better to do with your time than practice that sword.”

Katherine’s legs went weak. Her heart was pounding so loudly in her ears she almost missed the other man’s response. 

Panting, the swordsman spoke, “Really, Alec,” he mocked cheerfully, “one would think you’d read every book in existence already.”

There was a long, ominous pause. Then a long sigh. “I really don’t know why I put up with you,” Alec Campion declared dramatically. Katherine could picture him looking haughtily disdainfully, looking down his long nose at the shorter swordsman, the infamous St Vier, his first lover and the best, with the kind of playful, mocking tilt to his lips he’d often given to her and Marcus when they were younger. When he’d been alive.

When he’d been alive… 

“Uncle,” she called, her voice a hoarse croak, barely above a whisper.

“I think – ” the former duke declared, still talking to his lover, in that aristocratically precise voice of his.

“Uncle?” Her voice was louder this time, carrying over the hedge and causing the voices on the other side to fall silent.

And then Katherine was running, her feet pounding down the dirt road until she reached the low gate which led into the garden. She threw herself over it, tripped, fell, dirtied her breeches but didn’t even care. “Uncle!”

She looked up, saw the two figures in the distance, watching her. One was tall, elegantly languid, his long hair blowing in the wind. It was the same color as hers. The other man was shorter, a deadly stillness about him as he stood there with naked steel in his hand. “Master!”

And then she was running again, the years falling away from her until she was a young girl once mroe, as the tall man came towards her.

Katherine didn’t even hesitate, flinging herself into his waiting arms as soon as she reached him and pressing her flushed cheek to his cold one. She was laughing as she hadn’t in years; not since before Theron – her poor Theron – lay bleeding in Sophia’s arms on the University Hall steps, some sacrifice in a forgotten ritual about dead kings, and Lord Arlen had decided that for the good of the city and the realm, Tremontaine had to be destroyed once and for all. 

The tall man swung her up, his arms tight, possessive, around her. “Katherine?” he sounded more bemused than anything.

Katherine nodded against his cheek. _I’ve missed you_, she thought but did not say. Her uncle had always been alarming, unpredictable, but she realized now that his absence had been a constant sorrow, a regret, a sense that she’d failed him – she, who was trained as his swordsman in order to protect him.

She’d told him when he fled the city that she wanted to go with him, and it was as true now as it had been then. He’d asked her to stay then, asked her to become Tremontaine, and she had done her duty. 

But she had no more duty here, in this place, where all obligation and care was finally finished. “Uncle,” she said instead. 

Her tall uncle pushed back her hair in order to see her face. His green eyes were sharp and very fierce. “Why are you here?” he demanded of her.

The thud of her heart was suddenly painful and there was a sickening drop in her stomach. It occurred to Katherine for the first time that perhaps she’d never meant as much to her mad uncle as he had meant to her. 

She’d only known him for a few months at most – and he’d been drunk or high or absent for most of it. She’d learned all his names, known him, but perhaps he’d never cared to know her. “I –” she broke off, feeling sick, fighting the knot in her throat.

Her uncle’s eyes, if anything, grew fiercer. “Why are you here, Katherine?” he demanded again. “You’re not even old!”

The Master was beside him now, Richard St Vier, his eyes a startling blue, like hyacinths. “What happened?” he asked her, glacial calm to Alec’s hysteria.

“What happened?” Alec mocked, “_What happened_?!” He dropped Katherine to stand on her own two feet before him in order to wave his arms around angrily. “I’ll tell you what happened! Someone - - someone - - _someone_ \- -,” He broke off with a strangled growl.

“- - killed me,” Katherine finished for him, quiet and still.

Her uncle fell silent, his chest heaving. His eyes were very bright, and he looked away from her, staring fixedly out at the sea.

“Who?” the swordsman asked, voice a deadly promise.

Katherine waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, some of Arlen’s goons no doubt.” She bit her lip, suddenly unsure. “I gave as good as I got,” she hurriedly assured her teacher in the sword. “I took out half a dozen, at least, before they got me.”

The duke’s strangled snort sounded strangely nasal, as though he’d caught a cold.

Katherine eyed him for a moment before turning back to St Vier. “Of course,” she amended, taking pains to be fair about the whole thing, “I knew the terrain better than they did, but I really think my form was excellent and I had this one parry and follow-up strike that was a beautiful cross motion – ”

She began to demonstrate, the Master watching her with interest, when her uncle let out a small, high-pitched scream. “Stop it!” He was waving his arms around again. Katherine hurriedly dropped her sword so as not to cut him. “Stop it! For heaven’s sake!”

His niece and his lover looked back at him with faces that were mirror images of each other – swordsmen waiting patiently for his next move in order to counter it. He let out a laugh that was slightly hysterical but held begrudging amusement under it. “I created a monster,” he murmured, watching Katherine’s dark eyes lighten a bit, some of the wariness leaving her. “Well, as long as your _form was excellent_,” he muttered sarcastically.

Alec was stunned entirely speechless when Katherine laughed again, her smile breaking out like the sun from behind storm clouds, before she reached forward and grabbed him in a bruising hug. “God, I’ve missed you,” she muttered into his short, black coat, made of impeccable fabric.

“Yes, well – of course,” he said, but his hands were gentle as they encircled her again.

The swordsman let them be for a while. Then he asked, “And Jess? Theron and Sophia?”

“Marcus?” asked the duke.

“As far as I know,” Katherine said, voice muffled against Alec’s chest, “they’re alright.” She pulled back to look at both the men who had, in very different ways, helped raise her and helped her become who she was always meant to be, who she was _proud_ to be.

“Arlen attempted to destroy our family,” she said simply. “I stood in his way and showed him why that fight would be his last fight.” She shrugged. “He did not take the lesson well. Probably,” she drawled, “I should have prac-tic-ally disemboweled him.” Her eyes narrowed. “But never mind that now. He has been de-clawed enough that Jess and Theron will have no problem dealing with him.”

Her uncle nodded, watching her with a look she couldn’t decipher. The Master was smiling, glancing between the two Tremontaines, the duke and the duchess, uncle and niece, the scholar and the swordswoman, so similar in ways they couldn’t even see.

“She grew to be quite formidable, didn’t she Alec?” he observed.

The duke’s smile was slow and satisfied. “I never doubted it.”

With the ease of long familiarity, the two lovers turned together and began to make their way back to the house. Katherine watched them go, frozen for a moment in indecision.

“I thought,” she called, watching them stop, though neither turned back to her. “I thought – I might stay with you. For a bit,” she finished lamely, voice tapering off. She wasn’t sure if she was being rude, but the one place she had felt she belonged, felt it down in her very bones, had been in Highcombe, on Last Night, when the stars shown high above and the ground was cold with winter frost. When she’d been a girl of fifteen.

It had been her and the Master, and then her uncle had come. And he had belonged there as much as she had, because the Master loved him as well. She glanced down at the glint of gold on the hilt of her knife, the gift from the Mad Duke before she had known all his names.

Her uncle loved her. She knew it.

The duke turned back to her. His eyes sparkled with the perverse pleasure he got out of provoking people. Katherine gave him a stern look. The Master placed a restraining hand on his arm, causing him to look as frustrated as a boy.

“We would be disappointed if you didn’t stay,” St Vier told her. He was smiling and her uncle was already looking impatient.

“Come on,” he told her. “There’s a new book on the concept of substance and matter and its effect on distorting reality which was recently published in Chartil. We’re discussing it over dinner, Katherine, my dear,” he declared imperiously. The duke began to stride down the walkway to the house, his black coat billowing out behind him like an angry scarecrow. “We’re having fish!” 

The Master groaned. “Oh Alec, not again.”

Laughing, Katherine ran after them. She was finally home.

***

**Author's Note:**

> The last enemy to be defeated is death. 1 Corinthians, 15:26
> 
> I adore Katherine & Alec's relationship, and Katherine & Jess' relationship. Both are filled with people annoyed at or wary of or verbally-clear that they don't care about or like the other person, and yet everyone can see that they fiercely love and are loyal to each other.


End file.
